Austrian architect, sculptor, and architectural historian whose Baroque style, a synthesis of classical, Renaissance, and southern Baroque elements, shaped the tastes of the Habsburg empire. Fischer’s works include the Dreifaltigkeitskirche (1694–1702) and the Kollegienkirche (1696–1707), both in Salzburg, and the Winter Palace of Prince Eugene of Savoy (1695–1711) in Vienna. His Entwurf einer historischen Architektur (1721; A Plan of Civil and Historical Architecture) was the first successful comparative study of architecture. Early career in Italy and Austria. The son of a provincial sculptor and turner, Fischer was trained in his father’s workshop. He went to Rome at about age 16 and had the good fortune to enter the studio of the great Baroque sculptor and architect Gian Lorenzo Bernini. In Rome he acquired considerable knowledge of ancient art and of the scientific methods then beginning to be used in archaeology—methods that formed the basis for his own later archaeological...